You are the owner of a well-designed, flawlessly developed website stocked with relevant, well-written content. All your tags have proper keyword usage, you have developed SEO-friendly permalink structure, and you have followed all the best practices for optimization. All of your on-page SEO tactics are on point. Your next step is to practice solid link building strategies to get your page seen by searchers and to get it ranking highly for your keywords.
Link building has a reputation as being a difficult and time-consuming process. The reason for this is that it is difficult to know exactly how Google will value each of your backlinks. As a general rule, the juiciest backlinks are dofollow text links acquired from popular, high-ranking, well-visited websites.
The challenge in acquiring such an ideal link, not to mention hundreds more just like it, often leads frustrated website owners to consider less desirable alternatives. These “alternatives” include building a high-volume of low quality links on questionable websites, and even buying links. You must understand that these actions carry a high probability of causing your website to be penalized or even banned from Google. Simply said, Google is aware of SEOs gaming the search engines and just rolled out the Panda Update to make sure that this is less the case.
If you find yourself stuck at a point that you feel you have very few link building options, do not consider a high-risk, low-quality backlinking method. I’ve compiled a quick list of tips to help you consider better ways to build the kinds of links you need.
1. “Will Work for Backlinks.” This is an effective method to employ when you’ve helped an associate with a project or done some charity or volunteer work. Ask them to consider returning your kindness by simply adding a textual link from their website or blog to yours.
2. Create A Useful Tool. This could be something as simple as a basic calculator to help people determine “How to Calculate Your Household Energy Consumption” so they will know how many solar panels they will need to install, or some similar application. It is crucial to add the relevant tags to this to help people find it.
3. Content Is Still King. While it is admirable to fill your website with your best work, consider sharing the wealth. Set aside some of your masterpieces and begin submitting them to popular, high PR websites. Each one published will get you a relevant contextual link back to your website. People who maintain large websites, for the most part, will jump at the chance to post high-value, relevant content. Especially if they didn’t have to write it.
4. Network. Surely you have an extensive list of business contacts. So contact them.
5. Help A Reporter. Reporters need help. Many of them must produce a certain number of articles a week and don’t have time to compile all this information themselves. They need an expert (YOU) to give them a story. Set up an account at helpareporter.com and find out what they are looking for.
6. Comment, Comment, Comment. Blog commenting doesn’t have to be a spammy, underhanded backlinking method. Post only valuable comments on related websites. You must find and focus on websites that offer dofollow links. These are becoming increasingly hard to find, but they do still exist.
7. Create A Useful Tutorial. This should be something relevant to your keywords, of course. For example, I helped write a tutorial to teach blog owners how to properly configure the advanced settings for the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress. I noticed that the plugin had become quite popular, and that there were not many tutorials explaining how to configure and use it. Needless to say, my tutorial quickly became a very well-visited post. For an example of such a tutorial, visit http://kikolani.com/getting-the-most-out-of-all-in-one-seo-pack-wordpress-plugin.html. This URL is also an example of a blog tutorial that happens to allow for dofollow blog commenting backlinks in the comments section.
I hope these ideas will get your gears turning so you can begin building the high-quality backlinks you require. You should understand that a solid backlinking campaign will take some time. You may not have considered these methods, but while they may not be the fastest way to get links, they are definitely the least risky. A Google penalty will usually drop your website by at least 30 positions or will ban it completely. You have invested far too much time into your property to start cutting corners.
About the Author: Brian Flores is a SEO and blogger for InMotion Hosting, one of the top providers of dedicated hosting in the country.
Thank you so much for your posts! I found you through a google search for “Facebook Like Campaign,” trying to get a little more creative with my online marketing, and have become utterly immersed in your posts– SEO, building good links, creating engaging blog content, etc. etc. etc. What a great resource you are, to those of us building our companies from the ground up and needing a little direction now and then to stay on course. Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise!! It is SO greatly appreciated!!!!!
My site got affected by panda from 13th Oct , i hope this article will he me to improve my ranking. Thanks for your Valuable Article.
Most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the best results first. How a search engine decides which pages are the best matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another. The methods also change over time as internet usage changes and new techniques evolve. Thanks a lot.
However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors. Thanks.
The good news here is that face book does allow users to control what is displayed on the time line. As users scroll back, posts can be zapped from the time line. Stories can also be promoted to appear larger. Thanks for shairng.
Link building in and of itself is a vague and broad term that means to make a hyperlink towards something from third parties. Posting a link to your website from a Facebook account is an example. The process of hyperlinking is a great method to steer potential customers wherever you’d like. Thanks a lot.
This collection of link building tips are likely to guarantee that you will receive free links from already established websites. This differs from content-oriented development strategies which hope to gradually attract natural editorial links. Thanks a lot.
Thank You for your comments. Have already started reworking it. Yes, “slow and steady wins the race” actually that rule applies to just about anything in life.
@Nicolas, Buying links is just not an option in my opinion. It may work in the short term with some black hat techniques but somewhere down the path you will eventually get caught and everything that you have worked for will be gone overnight.
Definitely, go after the “its a lot of work” path because it will guarantee your success (slow and steady wins the race). I would recommend you to convert your site to a blog (or at least have a blog section). Blogs are easy to keep updated with fresh content and search engines like that.
Thank you for the information, I was using my IGoogle desktop and noticed the link in Tips and Tricks. Trying for months now to build a descent website, pertaining to the retal sector. Have to admit, that feeling a bit desperate, I purchased backlinks, and have been busy with inexpensive ads. I realize now that this may have hurt more than help. Taking your advice, my new direction is to offer useful content and submit to Blogs that are in my field. Its tons of work, but as you know, ” nothing good comes easy”. So thanks again. Love your site. Actually, the quesion I pose is…If I convert all my sites to Blogs, which have retail incorporated into it. Would that be more effective in promotion of my business? I say this only because, currently I run several small blogs and notice that they appear almost on the first page of Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
I like the “helping a reporter” way as well. I also summarized “21 Effective Ways to Build Links”.
There are many forums that allow links to your site in the member list, signature and/or profile. Find forums that match the topic of your business/site. Check if they allow links, sign in, embed your link, and start posting comments, questions, or answers. Do not spam, it is not polite and you can get banned. Focus on a few forums and post regularly. Forum links will not help you much with the search engine rankings but they do have some value. At least you will get indexed and also they can bring some visitors.
That help a reporter idea is great. Not only that you are feeding materials to them, these reporters can help get the words out about you and your niche!